


Day 1: Pining/Confession

by gorgawesome



Series: Shance Week 2k16 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Confessions, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, and happiness, the boys just need love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 04:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8518618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgawesome/pseuds/gorgawesome
Summary: Lance pines. And stalking and avoidance are not the way to someone's heart. Except when they are





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am not yet sure if I will be proof-reading these, as I am starting to get pretty busy at school. If someone is willing to help me with beta'ing, I would greatly appreciate the help :)

They had saved another planet from the Galra. They were heroes to another nation. They fought against an incredibly powerful enemy almost every day. And yet, Lance still couldn't find the courage in himself to approach Shiro and confess his feelings. He wanted to. He wanted the closure he knew it would bring, because he hardly expected Shiro to return his feelings. Why would he? The man was something of a legend, even back in the Garrison, even before the Kerberos mission and his subsequent 'death'. Lance was always there, watching from the sidelines, admiring him.

And though they were on the same team now, fighting closely together, unremitting and unstoppable. They were the closest they've ever been, eating at the same table, training together, spending their down time together along with the other Paladins. But yet, Lance still found himself on the fringes of Shiro's orbit, always there, but not quite. Sometimes it hurt to see how close Shiro and Keith were, and perhaps that was why he so often badgered Keith, to get Keith's attention away from Shiro and Shiro's attention on himself, even if it was brief and usually negative. This is why he would hung back after missions, knowing Shiro was always the last to leave the hangar, needing a moment to calm down and return to himself after battle. Lance saw him in these fragile moments that were most certainly private, purposely hidden from the others. But he saw them and kept them to himself. This little bit of Shiro was his and his alone.

This was another moment like this. They just got back in after a dogged fight with another one of the Druid's monsters. Everyone else had already gone on to the showers, used to Lance and Shiro being the last to join. Pidge had merely shaken her head when she passed Lance, muttering "Hopeless," under her breath. 

"Aw, don't be like that. Blue got pretty banged up out there, you know." He grinned, ruffling her hair, which earned him a sharp, narrow-eyed look from the girl. She sure had gotten taller. Soon enough she would be Keith's height. "Uh-huh." Pidge pushed her glasses up and turned to leave. She never dealt with his bullshit, which he rather liked about her. He just wished that she were a little less observant and perceptive some days.

He looked back towards the Black Lion as he pretended to check Blue's maintenance logs on the floating pad in front of her place in the hangar. He always did this. He always found some menial task to occupy him while Shiro did his own thing in Black. And of course, as he started to walk out of the hangar, he heard Black shift, the massive robot lion lowering to let its pilot out. He always headed out to the hallway, to keep an eye on Shiro from afar, where the Black Paladin wouldn't spot him in return.

"Lance."

Shiro's soft, yet firm voice made him freeze and grip his helmet tight under his arm. He turned to look at the man, heart hammering in his chest. This never happened. This isn't how it was supposed to go. He would disappear around a corner and Shiro would have his moment of recuperation, which Lance so often spied on. To the point where he had gotten very good at justifying to himself that he was doing this for Shiro's sake. Just in case the stress happened to be too much that day. Or perhaps even, in case he had been hurt and didn't tell anyone. But Shiro wasn't interested in keeping to Lance's imagined script.

"Yeah, Shiro? You need anything, man?" Lance asked as he came closer to Shiro, still keeping a healthy distance between them. Always just out of reach.

"I wanted to ask if everything was alright with you. You've been hanging around the hangar after missions lately." Shiro crossed his arms over his chest and though he only looked curious and genuinely concerned, to Lance, the body language appeared defensive. He took in everything from Shiro's stance, how set his shoulders were, to where his arms crossed and legs spread slightly in a perfectly effortless, militaristic stance. Lance felt unbidden, nervous shivers crawl up his arms and spine, though he forced himself to be still.

As much as he fantasized of telling Shiro how he felt, he also had no intention of telling the man, knowing himself to be too cowardly to hear Shiro's rejection.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just checking in with Blue." He had shrugged, an easy, lop-sided grin on his lips. "She's a needy lady." He wiggled his eyebrows at Shiro, feeling elated when Shiro chuckled at his antics.

"So you haven't been waiting on me to get out of Black?" Shiro smirked at Lance, the expression playful, teasing.

But Lance froze, his grin quivering and shattering, eyes wide like a cornered cat and body full of nervous tension. He had been so sure in the fact that Shiro hadn't seen him waiting and watching all those times. He had been absolutely certain that he was the only one watching. He had never considered that he himself would be noticed, much less watched.

"No." The answer perhaps came out a little too fast, a little too sharp and definitely too loud.

Lance did not see Shiro's reaction. He did not hear what the man's response was.

He ran.

\------

He avoided Shiro. He did not get Shiro's private moments of weakness, or his moments of joy, or his moments of content anymore. Whenever Shiro entered the same room, Lance put as much space between them as possible, engaging Hunk, or Pidge in conversation, or shutting the world out beyond his headphones. Sometimes, he would simply leave.

The team noticed. Of course they did.

Two fights where they just barely formed Voltron were enough for everyone, and especially Allura to notice. "Lance, you're lacking focus lately." She scolded.

Lance winced, rubbing the back of his neck. "Sorry-" He had started to say, to come up with some kind of excuse, but shut up and withered under the look the Princess leveled at him.

"No, I do not need your apologies. I need you to work out what it is that is distracting you." She said, before floating her gaze over to Shiro, who for his part, watched Lance with careful consideration.

"Dismissed." She waved her hand at her Paladins.

All the Paladins filed out of the control room, Shiro and Lance trailing behind everyone else.

"Lance, I would like to speak with you." Shiro stopped the young man with a hand on his shoulder once they were well outside of the earshot of others.

"In private." He added when Lance turned to look at him, that same, cornered expression on Lance's face, just like it had been in the hangar. Lance did try to school his face into something more neutral, more open and friendly.

"Sure, Shiro. What's up?" He kept his tone light and peppy, even though he very much did not want to go to what would surely be his doom. After he'd been avoiding Shiro and after what Allura just pointed out, he hardly wanted to have whatever conversation Shiro intended on having with him.

Shiro had shaken his head at him and brought him to one of the many, empty rooms in the castle-ship where they could speak in private. Shiro closed the door and stood as a barrier between Lance and freedom, though he looked oddly hesitant. Shiro bit at his lip and avoided Lance's eyes, completely out of Lance's expectation of how this would go. If anything, Shiro looked even more nervous than Lance himself felt.

"Did I do something to upset you with me, Lance?" 

The question blind-sided Lance. He had already been feeling off-kilter with Shiro's uncharacteristic apprehension and now the man was asking Lance if he'd hurt him in some way. Though maybe Lance shouldn't have been so surprised by this line of questioning. He _had_ been avoiding the man after all.

He smiled, shaking his head. "No, I'm not upset with you, my dude." Lance tried for a jokful tone. "Just been feeling kinda strange. Maybe I'm coming down with space flu."

Shiro's answering smile was small, and not entirely free of worry. "You ran away before I could say anything that time." He said, approaching Lance. And Lance was rooted to his spot, breath baited as Shiro lessened the distance between them. He was so close, within reach.

"Did I misread everything?" 

Now Lance was completely lost. He frowned in confusion. He took those words and dissected them, tearing them apart in his head and putting them back in context over and over again.

"I don't think I'm following." He admitted, lips parting on a silent gasp when Shiro's fingers touched his arm.

"Well, I-" Shiro cut himself off, his hand resting loosely around Lance's wrist as he stood over Lance. He was so, so close and Lance was beginning to grow dizzy from it.

"I thought that you might have... You've been watching me, so I thought you might... Feel the same." The last part left Shiro in a whoosh of breath, his fingers slightly trembling against Lance's wrist. Never mind that Lance's whole world had just been upended on its head. And all this time, Lance had thought that he had been the only one watching. He had been so focused on Shiro, so busy watching his back, seeing the legend, the man who was so far out of his league, that until now, he never saw the man that he was. He thought he understood Shiro, just because he had made himself privy to the man's vulnerabilities, but yet he never realized that that was not Shiro being open and exposed.

However, the man in front of him right now, was. 

"Feel the same? How do you mean?" He breathed, because he wasn't sure that this wasn't all just a dream, a beautiful fantasy.

Shiro watched him carefully as he cupped Lance's cheek. "If I'm wrong about this, stop me." He said firmly.

Lance swallowed, nodding in reply, before his eyes were falling shut and Shiro's lips touched his. The kiss was so soft and brief, barely there, but Lance knew it happened, because it still left his lips tingling and his whole being aching for more. He moaned, a desperately hungry sound, and wrapped his arms around Shiro's neck, pulling the man down the scant inch between them to kiss him back. To kiss him the way he'd dreamed of kissing Shiro for so long.

He relished in the way Shiro's arms came to wrap around him, destroying any leftover distance between them.

He had thought Shiro would forever remain out of his reach, raised on a pedestal of Lance's own making. But not anymore.

They were just men, with fight ingrained in their muscles and fiery passion burning in their hearts.


End file.
